Without really predicting the future, I've discovered a few places where quality goods can be purchased. I'malso from Oklahoma, but sadly don't live there now. Being a poet by training, I love the way lights flicker and sounds make my stomach all a flutter.

Jason is scared of being hidden. But then so are the digital bits he farms. Certain regulations require his standing, and then sitting, which is just too damn obvious. Sometimes he teaches at Griffith University (on the coast’s most golden of coasts) as a lecturer in Cyberstudies, although the term conjures robots with beaks and hard wired…somethings. If you like this, you love this: www.heliozoa.com.

Sometimes, after nights of talking with friends late into the night, you come home at three or four in the morning and stumble into the bathroom. After a long release of fluids, and the sound of a night’s hard work being flushed away, you look in the mirror. At first the disheveled interloper in the metal backed glass is someone you don’t know. You douse your face with water and lookup again. Still the head and nose and eyes appear strange wobbling back at you with their curious stare. You strain to recognize the person. You clean the glass with a mildewing towel from the floor and still struggle to befriend this other invading your space.

Perhaps that is the way I feel as a hypermedia poet. After the intoxicating experience of creating hypermedia works, I am bewildered by my artistic reflection. Am I, as some ask, a painter? A poet? A sound manipulator? A multimedia tinkerer? I suppose some would say I am all of these. And others would say none. The work presented here for the Ohio Arts grant represents my pulling together art forms, my collage of poetry, image, sound, movement, and interaction. All of these elements are then filtered through the web environment, allowing for a broad audience, a hypermedia gallery for every computer.

But all of this, all the merging of various genres and technology is still too new, too ever evolving for anybody to know in any coherently explainable way what exactly they are doing. And that is exactly why hypermedia is so beautiful and enticing. Sometime, long ago, someone began classifying and categorizing our world. You are a baker, you are a criminal and you over there are a Central American poet revealing the class struggle. While some say postmodernism is mired in it’s own labeling of anti-labeling paradox, it has, at least, provided a generous platform for the creation of hypermedia works. The previous ideas of what goes where, of what poetic technique is helpful for recreating the pains and joys of life, seem silly in a hypermedia environment. An environment where technology allows the artist to cross boundaries and create new borders. Creativity is dental floss is mouse movement.

When I painfully shave the coarse hairs from my face, and cleaning the cream from my face look into the mirror, I don’t see an artist I can place in a recognizable category. All I see are the crooked lines between my eyebrows and the towel rack behind me. I see a poem forming in the exhaust fans loud and louder buzz. The condensation over words carrying the light from a seventy-five watt bulb to patterns on the floor.

Wanted to share my newest net artwork. It’s aexploration of the web-vid obsession combined myown brand of insanity. Please do play all thesongs and feel much more than free to sharewith anyone and everyone.

The visionary Counterpath Press announces a call for work for Counterpath Online, its digital publishing venue. There is no specific theme, but all work must utilize digital tools to create interactive, moving, responsive, generative or playful creations.Text only works or documentations of work are not being considered for this issue.All artworks will be peer-reviewed/juried and the issue will be promoted extensively.

Please send submissions to Jason Nelson (Guest Editor) as soon as possible. Works that are submitted earlier will be given special consideration (we will ruminate on its beauty and power for much, much longer). E-Mail: elitpathREMOVETHISTEXT@REMOVETHISTEXTgmail.com

The final deadlines if June 18th 2008.

All work must be accompanied by the following:

1.Description of the work (300 wds.)2.Artist bio written as a small absurd story (300 wds.)3.Screen Shot (approx. 300x300, saved as jpeg)

Those authors/artists chosen will be asked to participate in a brief interview regarding their creations. In addition, authors/artists will be asked to write brief reviews (200 words) of another chosen authors/artists work.

Counterpath Press is committed to publishing and supporting intellectually rigorous work of the highest quality, with the highest production values. It is committed to publishing poetry, fiction, drama, cross-genre work, literary and cultural theory and criticism, translations, reprints of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles, as well as supporting a repository of high-quality work through internet publication.

These are digital poetry forms, bridges between the print and wired worlds. While not intending to create a blueprint, these poems and the included code, descriptions, videos and examples, are designed to help poets explore translating their poetics into interactive, non-linear, moving, playable digital creatures.Please do share your thoughts.